Artist Adebunmi Gbadebo had never made clay before his exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Before being selected to exhibit alongside Simone Leigh and Theaster Gates, Gbadebo primarily focused on paper, making works based on her research at True Blue Plantation on Pawleys Island, South Carolina.
Until 2020, Gbadebo – who is of both Nigerian and Black American descent – had never visited the plantation. That changed when the artist’s mother died of Covid-19. That year, Gbadebo traveled to the plantation – surrounded by cotton fields still belonging to descendants of the original slave-owning family – to bury her mother’s ashes where so many ancestors of the artist had been enslaved and eventually buried.
At Adebunmi Gbadebo In Memory of June Miller, 1871-1928, Gone but Not Forgotten, HFS (2023) Clay and Bone from True Blue Plantation Cemetery, Fort Motte, SC, gas fired H 12 XW 16 inches
Image courtesy of the artist and Maximillian William, London. Photography: Deniz Guzel
“There was a cemetery established in the 17th century for slaves, and after emancipation our family continued to be buried there,” she says. The Arts Journal. “Our relationship with space has never really been severed.”
It is from this earth, literally, that Gbadebo’s clay pots are derived – in a process she describes both physically and spiritually as ‘excavation’. The two pots currently on display at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston as part of the traveling exhibit that was previously at the Met, listen to me now (until July 9) and two new works exhibited in London during the artist’s first international exhibition at Maximillian William are made from plantation soil. Some include the Carolina Gold rice strain developed on the plantation and others include (animal) bones from the site.
At Adebunmi Gbadebo In Memory of Carrie Dash, 1903-1930, Here I Lay My Burden Down, DOWN (2023) True Blue Plantation Cemetery Clay, Fort Motte, SC, Carolina Gold rice, pit fired H 13 x W 21 inches
Image courtesy of the artist and Maximillian William, London. Photography: Deniz Guzel
Opening today (June 29), the London show—Inventing the rest: new adventures in clay (until August 12) – is the third in a series of annual exhibitions at the Mayfair Gallery “focusing on the cultural and formal significance of clay”. Previous iterations have included the work of Magdalene Odundu, Jennifer Lee, Thaddeus Mosely and Simone Leigh. Invent the rest highlights a new generation of artists born in the 80s and 90s who work with ceramics: Gbadebo exhibits alongside Andrés Monzón-Aguirre and Anina Major.
This is an exhibition devoted to artistic lineage: the three artists have seen their practice influenced more or less directly by Leigh, the Golden Lion-winning sculptor who represented the United States at the Venice Biennale in 2022. Major studied under Leigh at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), Monzón-Aguirre worked as Leigh’s studio director and while Gbadebo began working on her pieces for listen to me nowshe was acutely aware that anything she produced would be “in conversation” with Leigh’s work, she says.
From left to right: works by Adebunmi Gbadebo, Anina Major and Andrés Monzón-Aguirre
Image courtesy of the artists and Maximillian William, London. Photography: Deniz Guzel
The work also tests the gallery’s market for contemporary ceramics, says William. Of the clay series, this is the gallery’s first sales exhibition, and the exhibition is already attracting interest from some of the UK’s top institutional craft holders, he adds. The exhibition is also uniquely international – in fact, it’s the gallery’s “largest expedition engagement” to date, says William. Indeed, the question remains whether the works – so strongly grounded in their historical contexts – will translate for a London audience, but Gbadebo is optimistic.
“I feel like there are different entry points,” she says. “Sometimes America is really overwhelmed with representation; the audience here is more willing to engage in conceptuality, abstraction.”
- Inventing the rest: new adventures in clayJune 29-August 12, Maximillian William, London
